Heritage Breed Poults Coming!

[bigredfeather]

I am due to get 9 heritage breed poults tomorrow. I am raising and selling them to my broiler customers. I am getting 3 Blue Slate, 3 Bourban Reds, and 3 Bronze. This will be my first time doing turkeys, so not sure how it's going to go. I am hoping they will be between 12-18 pounds by Thanksgiving. I am aware of what to feed them, just not sure how much. Does one need to ration their feed like broilers? Is there any other tips you can provide. I am wanting to start them w/ my broilers that are coming at the same time. I was told by the hatchery it's best to seperate them at 6 weeks to prevent black head. Is this good advise? Anything you can tell me will be helpful. I've posted a few times in the turkey section, but got very little feedback, so I thought I would run it past everyone here.
Thanks.

 

[A.T. Hagan]

They should be plenty big by Thanksgiving. Start them on Game Bird Starter, at least 26% protein. My brand is 28%. DON'T ration their feed. Let them have it free choice. If you're raising Cornish Cross broilers I'd separate them early on because they don't need the higher protein that the turkeys do.

Come on down to the Turkey Forum and you'll find lots of advice.

 

[bigredfeather]

A.T. Hagan :

Come on down to the Turkey Forum and you'll find lots of advice.

I feel like a stranger there. LOL Like I said, I have posted there before.​

 

[PotterWatch]

I'm in the same spot as you are. I have six poults arriving the week of the 11th. We haven't done turkeys ourselves before so we're looking forward to learning more about them. We aren't selling them this year. One will be for the people who own the land that we raise our meat birds on and the others will be for ourselves or maybe a couple friends. I'm getting two blue slate, two black spanish, and two BBB. I got the bronze to make certain that we have at least one bird that is a good size for Thanksgiving. I don't care if the others take longer than Thanksgiving to grow to size since they are just for our personal use.

We are splitting the order with a farmer friend of ours. He is getting 10 blue slate and 10 black spanish. He's planning to feed them the same feed that all of his animals get. It's only about 10% protein. I've tried talking to him about their protein needs but he really wants to try it his way and see how it goes. He's big on learning by doing. They raised 24 turkeys last year but he wasn't the one taking care of them and I have no idea what they were fed at the beginning. I do know that they lost about half of their poults. I convinced him to try putting them with some meat birds this time at least at the beginning. I wonder if that will help at all given what he is planning to feed.